The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.

-- Richard M. DeVos

******

Back from SPA in Freeport, Maine. It was Such A Blast!! Great to see friends I don't get to see very often, fun to sit around and knit, laugh, drink wine and tea. Fun to go to the market (and for once not be working the market as a vendor) and great to see other fiberistas, too.

I made some purchases at the market:

The two books and the green yarn on the needles are from Halcyon Yarn in Bath, Maine. A skein of Amy's superwash/nylon sock yarn in "Chocolate" (couldn't resist the beautiful browns of this wonderfully soft sock yarn), a very dark green skein of Toasty Toes sock yarn (merino/angora) for socks for me, and a purple skein of Merino/Silk/Angora for a hat for a friend. These two yarns with angora I am totally blanking on the SPA vendor, but she was in the front right corner of the market when you entered through the far right door (near the afghan raffle). The green yarn already balled up and on the needles is Malabrigo 100% handspun angora in "Olive," also from Halcyon. I purchased two skeins to make a pair of fingerless mitts, but only needed one skein to make:

My own pair of Maine Morning Mitts from Clara's book (which I knit in one afternoon, on Monday ... ah, the pleasures of instant gratification):

Love them. And it's still cold enough to wear them. Yay! (Oh, the dog loves them, too. He tried to eat them off my hands yesterday.)

Today I am dyeing fleece ~ CVM/Cotswold in burgundy/golds/brownish hues and some Ramboillet. I'm actually not sure whether I'm going to dye the rambo or not, it's a really pretty dark gray / light gray / tan color (which will card into gray). I'm pondering blending it with this amazing bright white huacaya alpaca fleece I also purchased at the SPA market and some angora from my bunnies, which is gray / brown / white.

Also organizing club subscriptions today, getting ready for the first shipments in March, although the clubs don't actually close for another couple of days I'm trying to get a handle on how much materials each one is going to need and alert my wholesalers of upcoming orders. And finishing up the last shipment from the luxury fibers spinning club today and tomorrow ~ this one is the caaaaashmere. mmmmm.

And then, Bess is coming over for lunch and to play with yarn for a bit.

I'm planning another contest for specially-dyed yarn again ... stay tuned. This one is a silk / cashmere fingering weight yarn. Can't remember the yardage, but I think I have about 1,600 yards. Will probably pick two winners for 800 yards each. Maybe. I'll figure it out and post early next week, most likely.

Though special order dyeing always stresses me out a bit (what if how I see color isn't the same as what's in the recipient's head?), giving yarn away is alot of fun. And so far, the two winners have been happy with the results ~ Vi, the recipient of some wildly colored silk lace, and Monica, who won a skein of handpainted 100% cashmere laceweight in muted, winter beachy tones. These contests have added yet another dimension to my evil-enabler-ness.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

******

The scarf continues. I'm finished with the actual knitting, and am now working to finish the lacey border I decided to add to both sides. No other knitting has transpired around here. I dyed up what seems like a ton of yarn this week, for some projects that I'm working on. It was fun, but I'm glad I finished. Finihsed for now anyway.

Tomorrow, weather permitting (major finger and toe crossing happening here) I am off to Maine for SPA. I've been wanting to go to SPA for a couple of years now, and never thought I'd actually be able to get there. But, this year, I found a cheap flight, and a place to stay with some fiberistas so ... I'm off!

So, short and sweet. I'm off to finish the laundry, pack, figure out what projects to bring, balance the checkbook!

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

-- Rene Descartes, French mathematician & philosopher (1596 - 1650)

******

Sorry ... my ABC-Along photos for "C" are down in the middle of this post, because I wasn't thinking when I first wrote this post, and I can't seem to cut and paste them to get them up to the top. So, scroll on down to check them out ...

Hey! Before I forget ~ New Clubs are Open at STF! Fibers with Spirit Club and Yarns with Spirit Club. Yummy!

I've made some progress on the silk lace scarf in the last couple of days ...

It's about 12 inches long or so. Here's a close up of the stitch pattern (sorry it's a bit out of focus and also not yet blocked, hence the wobbliness of some stitches):


I really like this stitch pattern, and am designing a silk tank top / shell in my head with this as the body, and a more solid pattern across the bust area (sort of like the gold one I did a while back that's in my Flickr photos, but not quite). This tank top pattern I will write down (unlike the gold one which I designed as I knit and didn't write anything down at all. Big Dummy move, that.)

So, for this scarf, I doubled up the silk laceweight and am using it double-stranded. It's still very lightweight, and I really like how this blends the colors into a more cohesive tone. However, doubling up means that I will need another skein, which is not a problem since I still have plenty of this colorway (wanna know what it is? Lace Yarns, it's Atropos, SS-07-10-01). Anyway, I wound it into a center pull ball on my ballwinder and then rewound it by hand into a double-strand ball.

I have this project in the perfect little bag, which I keep forgetting to take a picture of but I love, love, love it. It's the sock knitting bag that Crazy Lanea made ... you can buy them here. Yes, it's for carrying your sock knitting on your wrist, but it works very nicely for small lace projects, too. Anyway, I'm getting another one. Because one can never have too many project bags. And these are really, really cool.

I am enjoying knitting on this scarf, but I am so looking forward to it being done because I have alot of other knitting I want to get finished in time for MDS&W ... booth samples, one or two new sock patterns, another lace scarf, maybe this lacey silk shell ...

So, the stupid moebius continues to be doomed beyond belief. It's really getting a bit comical around here, what is happening with this particular skein of yarn in its various transmutations (note that transmutation means transformation of one element into another by one or a series of nuclear reactions. I feel like this moebius has been a series of emotional nuclear reactions). DD left it outside the other day, and The Dog got a hold of it and chewed several holes in it, as well as a large chunk of the edge completely off. So, now I am considering sewing across and cutting the insulting chewed areas off. (what I'd really like to do is throw the damn thing in the garbage and forget about it, but DD isn't brightening to that idea. yet. Maybe I'll leave it on the floor this afternoon while I go get the kids from school. It might be completely gone by the time I get home.)

"C" IS FOR COW ~

Saturday, the kids and I went over to my friend H's farm to visit her new calf, Rufus, who is 5 days old today. DD got to feed him, and then the two of them chased eachother around in the grass, back and forth. Here they are:

Lunch Time:

Play Time:

Buddies:

H also has a rabbit, and a few months ago she got a new kitten. The kitten and the rabbit have fallen in love, and now cohabitate in the rabbit hutch. There is a ramp for the kitten to get in and out. It's so funny to watch these two together ~ they wrestle, bite eachother's ears, and curl up together to sleep ...


Wacky.

Off to fill some orders now.

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And in thy meager store there are but left
Two loaves
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

-- Sheikh Muslih-uddin Saadi Shirazi, The Gulistan of Saadi, 1270

******

I think that might be my favorite quote of all time. It's at least up in the top ten. I love the thought it evokes.

Well, all was not lost with the stupid moebius (yes, it is stupid, I am not. And that's the story Im sticking with). My daughter loves it, even with it's too twistiness.

See?
She's dressed up for the History Fair at school, which focused on Renaissance History. Her topic? Spiritual Needs of the Renaissance. She came up with this all by herself. Go figure. She is her mother's daughter, heh?

I got a tad bit more done on the Forest Canopy Shawl last night ...


But I am getting sidetracked by this:


Atropos 100% bombyx silk laceweight in a pink/saffron color. I told the kids' school I'd try to knit something for their annual silent auction on February 23. Yeah, I've known about it since September. I work better under pressure (I hope I get it done in time). I'm planning a lace scarf using a mesh lace pattern from the first Barbara Walker book.

It needs to be done by February 20, however, because I am going to SPA in Maine this year and leaving here on February 22! Yay! Very excited about being able to go to this event this year.

And I picked an entirely different color of the cashgora/merino to knit the Flower Basket Shawl in. Not very flowery, but I don't have any samples knitted in a soft color like this for the booth, so this is what it will be (it is safely ~ I hope ~ closed up in a ziploc bag):


It's a blend of very pale salmon, tan, cream. I'm intrigued to see how it will knit up.

And here is how I am woken up each morning:


He's so much taller than my bed it's not even funny (and my bed is a bit higher than regular height, too). Usually it's a cold nose poked on my eyelid, or a lick on the nose.

Now I'm off to work ... yarn to dye today.

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.” Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, “How good or how bad am I?” That's where courage comes in.

-- Erma Bombeck

******

Monica is the winner of the cashmere yarn contest! So, a skein of cashmere laceweight dyed in the colors of the beach ~ blues, tans, creams, beige ~ will be on its way to her early next week. I'll try to remember to post a photo of it before I put it in the mail (I forgot last time ... Vi will have to post a photo on her website of the silk laceweight she won).

This has been great fun, and I've visited alot of new blogs that are really great ... some I've left comments on, but not all (I really need to work on my poor commenting habits ... I read alot, but don't comment often, which is not very nice. I'll work on that).

I'm planning another contest for the beginning of next month. I'd like feedback on whether I should give away some yarn, or some spinning fiber. I have alot of quite nice yarns ... my favorites right now are Isis (these names are the ones I've given my yarns, on my website): cashgora / merino and Lyra: alpaca/merino/silk, and all of the laceweights. So, it may be one of these yarns. Or some handpainted spinning fiber: merino/silk/cashmere top, merino/angora/silk top or camel/tussah top. Got an opinion? Leave me a comment.

Ok, so the skein of cashgora/merino was just doomed from the moment I brought it into the house. I knitted a moebius with it, and totally f*cked it up. Blast it. I swear I only had one twist in the moebius, but when I cast it off ~ what? not one twist. Two twists. Two twists don't work. I'll either give it to my daughter to play with her dolls, or else to the Dog. Nah. He'll just eat it and then I'll have to clean it up again when he throws it up.

Doomed. Just doomed. Crap.

So, I don't have any knitting photos, since this stupid thing is what I've been knitting on for the past several days and everything else is therefore in its same state. The moebius was a pattern I was designing ... the pattern works, but I'm so disgusted with my idiotic mistake (how long have I been knitting? Way Long Enough to figure out how many twists there are! Jeez) that I don't feel like knitting another one. Maybe later.

So, someone asked in the contest comments what kind of dog is 115 pounds at 8 months old: Phoenix is a cross between a Great Pyrenees and an Anatolian Shepherd. Both are huge, strong dogs, 100-150 pounds or more (I hope he's not more than 150 pounds ... time will tell.). He looks more like an Anatolian in coloring with his tannish-gold fur and black muzzle. Both breeds are intelligent, independent and bred to guard animals. Phoenix hasn't grown up with animals, so he guards us instead. He doesn't like strange men too much (though he doesn't bite, he can be pretty scary with delivery guys and such). He is incredibly gentle, very entertaining and really wonderful. But also incredibly stubborn. He'll be going to doggie school, with me, in the near future.

Here he is with one of my friends two year old daughter (he loves, loves, loves little kids ... probably because they are just the right height for licking):



And here he is with my son (one of his main squeezes and definitely his favorite chew toy):

(yes, that is my antique great wheel in the background, which I purchased about 5 years ago and still haven't finished fixing or actually set up to use. It looks pretty, though. I just prefer my Majacraft Suzi and my wee Robin to actually spin on.)

And I liked how While Tangerine Dreams showed us what's on her bookshelves. That was fun to see. So, here's what's on a few of my favorite bookshelves (if you click on the photos a larger version will pop up):

And here is my bookshelf (that our friend Paul made for me) (I so love my bookshelf ... and having my books finally, finally out of storage after nearly three years), as well as the staircase (the tree on the left of the photo is one of two that goes from the floor of our basement up to the ceiling of the first floor; the window is in the center of the stairwell and lets alot of light onto the stairs ... it was one of two Window Splurges when we built the house ~ the other was the set of french doors opening onto the screened porch):

Ta for now.